


Sleep, Over

by Deadcanons



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Abandonment, Alien Character(s), Alien Culture, Alien Planet, Angst, Anxiety, Are they really monsters though?, Basically it's an episode of Doctor Who, Cameos, Canonical Character Death, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Creepy monsters, Death, Dissociation, Echoes of Clara Oswin Oswald, Electrocution, FP doesn't actually show up but they get referenced, Faction Paradox (Doctor Who), Fear, Fear of Death, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Insomnia, Male-Female Friendship, Minor Original Character(s), Mystery, Natural Disasters, Nightmares, Original Aliens - Freeform, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Multiple, POV Third Person, Plotty, Psychological Trauma, References to Canon, References to Major Characters, Sleep Paralysis, Telepathy, The Doctor & Clara Oswin Oswald Friendship, The Hybrid - Freeform, Time Lord Angst, Time Lord Lore, Time Travel, Twelfth Doctor Era, Watching Someone Sleep, Weird Plot Shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:00:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24854230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deadcanons/pseuds/Deadcanons
Summary: 'I guess, when I imagined the inside of your mind, I never stopped to consider that it might be the same as mine.'The end has come to the planet of Kasamos. An impossibly large storm is overtaking the planet, destroying everything it touches. Clara and the Doctor are determined to save the home of the Kasama. They've stopped worse before. There's no reason to suspect they'd have any trouble. So why does Clara keep having nightmares? And why does the nightmare parallel real life like that?...And is there a reason it always ends with her death?
Relationships: The Doctor & Clara Oswin Oswald, Twelfth Doctor & Clara Oswin Oswald, Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald
Comments: 14
Kudos: 13





	1. (unaccountable panic)

**Author's Note:**

> Basically I got an idea for a Doctor Who book and I can't not write it so I'm posting it on here. Plus, I felt like seeing how the world of fanfiction is doing these days. How are you guys? How's it going? Please enjoy.
> 
> Also, [here's this story's playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0aig9WX77hqhXuRsZ04JRF?si=QAXt1SIwQTW_Lndg48wdLg)

CHAPTER ONE

(unaccountable panic)

It started on Kasamos.

This isn’t exactly true. It had actually started several weeks (was it weeks? or months?) prior. The first time Clara had the nightmare. But she didn’t say anything that night, nor any of the subsequent nights when it happened again. So really, it started on Kasamos. Because that was when the Doctor found out.

It was one of those places that the TARDIS had taken them to on its own. (They had actually been in the kitchenette downstairs, playing cards—well, ‘playing’ is a strong word. The Doctor was trying to show her three-dimensional rummy and she was following very little of it.) Both of them looked up as one when they heard the sound of the engines engage.

‘Trouble,’ Clara said.

‘Could be a false alarm,’ he said, appraising her.

She snorted. ‘You don’t _do_ false alarms.’

The Doctor hid his smile and Clara pretended not to notice it. When they got out of the TARDIS, however, they were greeted with nothing more or less than a sandstorm. The air was tinted yellow by the blizzard of sand and dirt raking through the hot wind. As it crawled into her clothing and hair, Clara wondered why she’d been so excited to go outside.

‘Devil,’ the Doctor mused.

‘What?’ Clara said through her hand.

‘Fairy wind,’ he added, dramatically. It was awfully annoying how his whinging didn’t seem hampered by the sand. Clara couldn’t get very far into this thought before the storm suddenly lifted. A cloudy, hot day came into sharp and sudden focus around them, the sun boring into them absent the sand that had preceded it. Large patches of the sky were grey with thick masses of clouds. The humidity gave the air a flavour, thick and sweet with dust.

‘Where did--?’ Clara started, but stopped when she turned and saw the sandstorm still behind them. It loomed several hundred metres behind the TARDIS, an alarmingly-large pillar of sand and debris drilling into the sky. It was smaller than a tornado, but not by much. ‘That can’t be a dust devil,’ she said.

‘Too big, you think?’ he asked, sidling up next to her.

‘Too _much_ ,’ she said. ‘I thought a dust devil only lasted a couple minutes.’

‘The air is hot.’ His fingers rolled together. ‘Jupiter holding his breath.’

‘Like the high temperatures before a monsoon,’ Clara said.

‘Maybe.’ The Doctor pursed his lips. He squinted. He turned in a slow circle, away from Clara, and she got the distinct impression he was hiding his face. But then again, she got that impression from him a lot.

Abruptly, he picked a direction and jerked his head at Clara to follow. They headed east from the TARDIS. They were in a field of some sort, mostly barren, with sparse, mostly dead wheat growing out of the furrows. The ground looked hard and cracked, like it hadn’t been touched in years.

In the near distance, Clara could see more of the so-called dust devils swirling and rampaging across the pockmarked landscape. As they walked, she grew more and more confident that they weren’t dust devils at all. For one, some of them were far closer to the size and colour of a tornado—those were thankfully the farthest away. For another, she could clearly see that some of the devils had no dust in them whatsoever. If she didn’t know any better, she would say they were full of water, like living clouds. And they didn’t seem to move right. Sometimes they stayed in place for minutes on end; sometimes they travelled against the wind.

The wind. There was so much of it, buffeting past them. It ebbed and eased, at times whispering by them on a breeze, at times smacking into them like a wall. It never abated.

When Clara was a little girl, she lived in a partially-renovated cottage in Blackpool with her parents. Sometimes, in late summer, there would be long stretches of record-high heat waves. Days where it was so hot that it was hard for even a seven-year-old to justify going outside. Each one of them would end with a monsoon. The heat would break as clouds polluted the sky, and from their dark pores came thick, endless rain. The smell of petrichor would be so strong it would make her sneeze. It seemed like it would rain forever. Like the sky was breaking.

If the dust devils were the calm before the storm, Clara didn’t think she wanted to see the storm itself.

They found a city, and in the city they found a caravan. It seemed as if every citizen in the place was in queue, standing in an orderly line with bags and backpacks and babies strapped to their backs.

The queue led all the way to the other end of the city, where Clara and the Doctor could see a huge, sleek tan spaceship, conspicuously coloured as to blend in with the sandy horizon. The line shuffled slowly forward as each citizen boarded. Now and then thunder sounded, muffled, like an argument in the adjacent room.

The Doctor didn’t immediately head for the ship, which probably should have tipped Clara off. But she was, if anything, too focused. She was several blocks from the city gates before she realized the Doctor was nowhere nearby.

She looked around quickly. The city had an open, sporadic layout—city was almost too much of a word. Buildings were separated by long, meandering avenues that weren’t quite streets or sidewalks; weren’t quite intersections or blocks. Clara couldn’t see a single building taller than the ground floor. But looming above them—quite tall, taller than the spaceship maybe—were slender white poles. They were dotted at regular intervals, spread across the entire city with a deliberate hand. Craning her neck, Clara could see wires and trusses sticking out of the top of each one like feathers. Telephone poles, then? But there were no wires connecting them. Generators?

She remembered herself and looked around again for the Doctor. The only sign of life was a sliver of the caravan, visible between two nearby buildings.

There was, all things considered, no reason for alarm.

Clara and the Doctor got separated all the time.

In fact, just off the top of her head, she could distinctly recall at least three occasions where she deliberately got them separated just to get away from him. Just for some time to explore on her own. Just for an opportunity to do something clever and tell him about it afterwards.

And yet, her heart hammered. An unaccountable panic had taken root in her chest, the sort of panic normally reserved for a Dalek blaster aimed at the head. The stress made her spine tense and her hands clench. It felt exactly the same as when she was interrogated by that clockwork man, after the Doctor’s regeneration. Or that time a Weeping Angel got hold of her collar on Stellaris II. Like a deadly monster was right in front of her. Ready to kill.

There was nothing wrong. Clara kept telling herself that, over and over. But the problem was, this was how it started. The nightmare. It always started with her getting separated from the Doctor.

With alarming timing, a gong ring of thunder reverberated across the flat plains. It was so close and powerful that it rattled in Clara’s ears long after it ended. She looked up—when had all these clouds gathered? A light rain began falling, so light that it did nothing to saturate the ground, only kicking up a cloud of sand.

Accompanying it was an eerie sound echoing around the town. A ululating cry, as if from a strange bird. It rose steadily in pitch as the rain kept on. It took Clara an embarrassing amount of time to realize it was coming from the caravan. It was the sound of people wailing in fear.

Clara started to head in the general direction of the TARDIS, only to stop a few paces in. She berated herself under her breath. The Doctor would be heading _into_ the danger, not out of it. A storm like this is _exciting_ , Clara. Remember? Were you always this flighty, or is that also because of the nightmare?

She turned heel and pressed on, further into the city. As far as she could tell, she was headed in the direction of the ship, but it was impossible to see very far ahead of her. A fierce wind filled the spaces between the buildings, creating tunnels of sand. Before long, her path fishtailed in the direction of the caravan, which she could at least find with her ears.

The line of aliens had bent in on itself, collapsed into groups of strangers huddling for safety. Clara called out as she approached, waving both arms—which seemed an understatement, given the aliens’ physiognomy. Those nearest to her were waving with _four._

Huddled under the stony overhang of one building, she and the aliens struggled to hear one another. ‘You’ve picked the wrong time to visit Kasamos,’ one of them said.

‘Why are you here?’ another said, less friendly. ‘Everyone knows how unsafe the planet is. Don’t you realize we’re evacuating?’

‘I’m looking for another alien, like me,’ Clara said. ‘He’s called the Doctor.’

‘Doesn’t sound familiar.’

‘You’re the only alien here.’

Clara was quiet for a moment, looking around. Getting her heart back under her head. ‘Do you know what direction the ship is in?’

One of them pointed the way. ‘I wouldn’t bother. They’ll have closed the doors when the storm started.’

‘Leaving all of you trapped? That’s terrible.’

He shrugged. ‘Better that than risk the people already inside.’

‘Don’t,’ his friend said to her, tone flat. ‘If you go out there, you’ll be struck.’

Clara thanked them but found herself leaving quickly. Despite their warnings, they made no attempt to stop her. Something about their nonchalant attitudes didn’t sit well. The wail she’d heard had her anticipating frantic, panicked civilians—but those aliens had been calm in their crisis. They seemed detached from it, aloof, as if they were used to it. Settled in for the long haul. She shuddered in the warm rain.

Throughout all this, the thunder had been intermittent but relentless. Some of the rumbles were loud and close and some of them sounded miles away. Clara could just see the bulk of the spaceship coming into focus, an eerie mass of shadow on the horizon. Then a bolt of lightning hit the ground in front of her.

It wasn’t _directly_ in front of her—perhaps twenty metres ahead. But it was certainly close enough to blind, scorch, and jumpscare. Clara screamed, wholesale, as she hit the ground.

The rain was coming down light and steady, and the sand clouded around her like mist. She sat up on one arm. Her skin was hot and her eyes were dilating so rapidly that it felt like they would fall out of her head. She squeezed them shut and pressed a palm into her temples. The rain was a soft hiss in her ears. When the ringing faded, she realized she could hear the Doctor’s voice.

‘…Come on, that’s it! Up you get. Four arms and you can’t do a pull-up? I’ve only got the two, _and_ I’m two thousand years your senior, and I could still do better than that. Up, up! Come _on._ You only get to flee your home planet once, you know.’

His voice came from above. Distant, but far-reaching in the symphonic space of the storm. Squinting ahead of her, Clara could just make out the silhouettes moving near the top of the ship. People were climbing up the edge of some sort of hatch or hangar, climbing into the ship. One silhouette was a constant, ducking back and forth, helping them up. The Doctor.

Clara set her jaw. She was going to be helpful if it killed her.

She soldiered on until the shadow of the ship had swallowed her. It loomed like the wall of a canyon. At the front, the dark grey line of a hatch seam suggested a closed door—like the cargo hold of an airplane. This must have been where the line ended. Now, people were crowded around the ship’s base, vying for shelter from the storm.

The ship couldn’t take off in these conditions, but it couldn’t open its belly, either. The rain and silt and sporadic wind varied from blinding to deadly. And the lightning had become a regular fixture, striking the ground at frequencies and proximities that Clara didn’t like at all.

From what she could tell at this angle, rain driving into her eyes, the Doctor had opened up some sort of hatch near the top of the ship. People were scaling its sides to climb in. In front of her, those who could not climb were leaning on the ship, looking up at unattainable salvation.

Clara nodded to herself. She turned away from the ship, running back towards the buildings. She looked through windows and doorways, scanning the streets. She didn’t know exactly what she was looking for until she saw it: a roll-out ladder, hanging off of the roof of one building. It flapped wildly in the harsh wind, but Clara caught it and pulled until it came free.

Back at the ship, she found the nearest climber and shoved the ladder into two of his hands. ‘Take it up!’ She pointed to the top of the ship, indicating what he should do with it once he was there. She hadn’t even gotten through half the gesture before he’d taken the ladder and started his ascent.

The ladder wasn’t as tall as the ship, but it would have to do. The ship tapered out closer to the top, with stacked fins and staggered metal supports. The ladder could get people up to there, at which point it would be easier to climb the rest of the way. As she saw her climber hook the ladder into place and let it fall, she gestured an older alien over. A woman who was gripping onto a tapered white staff. Clara guided her onto the ladder.

The aliens climbing around the ladder began spotting whoever Clara sent up. They did it wordlessly, without hesitation or even much thought, as if it were a pre-arranged set of instructions. They had a keen awareness of one another, watching out for each other as they climbed. She remembered the nonchalance of the other group she met and felt a stab of remorse—these were good, decent people. Why was this happening to their planet?

After sending up what felt like hundreds of aliens, one after another up the ladder, Clara decided to join them. The climb seemed to take minutes. She was happy to see the Doctor’s frantic face at the top, barely suppressing his excitement as he ran from person to person, ushering them through the slim service doors on the ‘prow’ of the ship.

‘Clara!’ he cried as she stood. ‘Good thinking.’ This comment was probably in reference to the ladder, but it was hard to tell with all his dashing about. ‘We need to get them inside as fast as we can.’

‘What happens if we don’t?’

He paused long enough to rear in front of her. ‘It’s happening already. Kasama struck by lightning, swallowed in flash floods, ripped up by the sand in the wind. Choking on dirt. We’re their only chance at survival.’

‘Hell of a storm,’ Clara said, helping the next person up the ladder.

‘No,’ he said. ‘This isn’t the storm. This is just a warm-up. The preamble.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Not sure yet. Something I saw earlier. What was it?’

She didn’t say anything, focusing on steadying the ladder as a gust of wind sent it rearing up from the ship. Inwardly, she was scrambling to think of what the Doctor had seen. She would have seen it too. Sometimes, she beat him to the punch, but just then, she was so tired…

A sudden series of thunder cracks rumbled and ripped up the skyline. The Doctor stopped and straightened up. ‘Ah. That’s what I saw.’

She stopped too. The flashes of lightning broke through the barrier of dust and clouds, briefly illuminating the horizon. There, crawling forward across the landscape, was a roiling mass of clouds, rain, and lightning. It must have been several hundred miles away, but it could be seen creeping relentlessly closer. Something about it seemed malevolent. Like it knew the city was up ahead.

‘That’s…’

‘Terrifying, isn’t it?’ the Doctor said, relishing the word. She could hear his wicked smile. ‘A super-storm. What do you think, Clara, can we stop it?’

‘Of course,’ she said, on instinct. But her heart was pounding, and a vague dizziness made the ship seem even taller than it already was. She couldn’t take her eyes off the horizon. There wasn’t enough lightning to see the storm anymore, and she had only seen it for a moment, but she knew what she saw. She had seen something moving inside of it. Figures moving in the clouds. She couldn’t pick out detail, but she didn’t need to. Even at a distance, she knew the faces of those fuzzy blobs.

Faces like the ones in her nightmare. Gnashing teeth, wide lips, jutting stretching monkey mouths. Grinning and hooting and biting obscenely. Monstrous.

They were so far away, but she could picture all of those faces looking at her and grinning.

What were they doing here? They couldn’t be here. Was this a nightmare? Was she asleep?

‘Clara?’ she heard the Doctor say, and whipped around.

He was looking at her dubiously. ‘Make sure the rest of them get inside, will you? There’s something I’ve got to check.’

She nodded. ‘Where are you going?’

He swept up next to her to point down at the city. At the top of one of the tall white poles, Clara could make out vague movement. ‘I thought I’d better make certain no one breaks their neck,’ he said. ‘Meet you back here. Somehow I doubt they’ll be taking off any time soon.’

Clara nodded. He nodded back. He moved to climb down the ship, but then quickly looked up to smile at her. She smiled back.

Then he disappeared over the edge, and Clara returned to helping the next person up the ladder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How is everyone doing in the lovely world of AO3? Drop a line in the comments, say hi. Or say hello on Twitter, @Deadcanons.


	2. ((escaped privilege))

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's about a monster in a house and a girl in a storm.

CHAPTER TWO

((escaped privilege))

There was dirt in Kikimory’s wine, and it was ruining the moment.

To be fair, there was always dirt in Kikimory’s wine, but you would think that in an important scene like this one, there wouldn’t be. She sat on the ground at the end of the catwalk, the viewports surrounding her on all sides. The screens encased the catwalk in a dome, so that all around were different live feeds of N-space: a busy shipping warehouse on the planet Earth, an astral bowling rink on Desolas, a concentration camp on Skaro. And on the screen Kikimory was looking at, Kasamos. The shot was cluttered with whipping sand and rain, so dense with movement that even the advanced holo-tech was occasionally reduced to a pixelated blur. But Kikimory knew what she was looking at.

She lifted one gnarled hand and the image pulled sharply forward. It focused again on her girl. From some high vantage point, Kikimory’s target stared at the tortured sky and the advancing storm that blotted it. Eyes the size of suns, emptied by horror. Just the way her girl should be.

Things had been going so well since the development of the storm. It looked like it really would destroy the planet. And all of it would be her girl’s fault! Kikimory shivered in delight and bundled her robe tightly around herself.

Mutt came in from the house. Kikimory recognized his silhouette in the sliver of light slicing through the automatic doors. Oh, sunspots. If it weren’t for Mutt, and if it weren’t for her wine, this moment would be perfect.

‘How’s the target?’ Mutt said, in his too-loud voice.

“You can’t tell already?’ Kikimory said dryly. ‘Her nightmares are becoming reality. She’s going to snap soon, I can feel it in her heart.’

Mutt’s shuddering, heavy footfalls closed in across the dirty floor. The shiny viewport screens were the only clean thing in the entire pocket dimension.

‘I suppose we’ll be working together, now,’ he said.

Kikimory scoffed and guffawed. She had half a mind to throw her wine glass, too, but decided that was overkill. ‘My target and your target are _not_ going to meet, Ammuttadori.’

Mutt laughed tunelessly. ‘They’re already on the same planet. At least try to be open to the idea. It might be fun.’

‘Fun,’ Kikimory spat. _Fun_. As if she did this for fun. Mutt tried to talk again, but she just grumbled and muttered to herself until she couldn’t hear him anymore. With her free hand, she fiddled with the viewport so that it zoomed in closely to her girl’s face. Her wide eyes and round cheeks. The high-definition fear in her eyes. Kikimory heard the automatic door grind open as Mutt went back to the house. 

She sipped her wine, swished it. Chewed the dirt.

Adaima was 13 cycles old. This means she was eight years old in Earth time, but Adaima had never been to Earth, or heard of it before, and even if she had it was unlikely she would have cared much about how old they thought she was.

Adaima had spent her whole life on her home planet Kasamos. She loved Kasamos. She loved the hot air and the huge blood-red sun. She loved stargazing in the perfect dark of the desert. She loved foraging for _soya_ berries in the summer and chasing the _joyin_ through the hills in the winter. And she loved her big redstone house and the smell of her mother cooking in the kitchen. So, naturally, it troubled Adaima very badly to know that her planet was about to be destroyed.

That morning, Adaima was nervous. She felt like she couldn’t breathe in the hot air. She stood in the shadow of her mother as she did her job, searching each person before they boarded. The line of people seemed to get longer every week. It twisted all about the city of Mavana like a _satar_ hunting. That’s what the ramp of the ship looked like. The open mouth of a _satar_ as it slithered through the brush. The way it distended its jaws to swallow _joyin_ whole…

Her mum stopped a man who was trying to sneak an extra bag on board. His relief was palpable, as if she’d lifted a weight from him. At least, that’s what Adaima suspected he felt—she wasn’t privileged like her dad.

At the thought of her dad, she suppressed a gasp. She’d left his last letter in the house. She had a strange and horrible feeling that she would never read it now. Her stomach twisted. The heat was a worm inside of her. She folded all four of her arms over her stomach and held herself, ignoring the heat, willing the pain to go away.

It was right around then, of course, that the storm started. Adaima heard the distress in the line before she heard the thunder. Murmurs of fear raced down the body of the crowd like hot flashes. It was all chaos after that. People running madly for the ship. People running _away_ from it, trying to escape privilege.

They were all so afraid—not just for themselves, but each other. Adaima couldn’t take it. She turned to find her mum, who had drawn her light sap and was cracking it in the air around the crowd, trying to push them off the ramp. She tried to get into the ship, but there were too many Kasama around her. They jostled her and pushed her back even without meaning to.

One of them was privileged. When their skin touched, Adaima saw _his_ vision of fear: _hot pokers covered in melted metal, chains pulling his arms and legs apart. The pokers are inserted into his back one at a time. His flesh oozes like hot cheese._ She screamed and ran blind from the ship, ran from the other Kasama, as fast as she could.

At first she was running from the fear. When that faded, she ran from the crowds. And when everyone else was gone, from the storm. It had gotten much worse all around her, the wind whipping her poncho and hair. The air was so dense with sand and dirt that it lacked depth, as if a wall was right in front of her. When she saw a signal pole looming in the dark, she didn’t hesitate. 

She climbed fast, two arms straddling the pole and the other two pulling herself up. Once she reached the tapered white top of the pole, Adaima felt less fear than she had on the ground. Something about the vibration of the signals moving through the poles—it calmed her. She felt free, as if the ground had been trapping her.

There were hundreds of these tall white poles throughout the city, bouncing signals back and forth between each other. The signal poles were an important part of Kasamos. They allowed for immediate, stable electric power across every inch of the planet. Even in the barest, emptiest stretch of desert, you could get a signal. Wherever you went, you could light your stove or charge your communicator, call for help or share stories.

Unfortunately, other than that, Adaima didn’t know much about how her world worked. Her mum forbade her from going anywhere near the poles, calling them dangerous. When Adaima was an adult, her mum said, she would teach her all about them. Not until then. Natch, now that the world was going to end, she would never know.

It was then that she saw the man at the top of the ship. He was running back and forth near one of the service hatches, helping pull Kasama up so they could get inside. She watched him in amazement. _He only had two arms._ He was running around lifting Kasama four times her size and cheering on the climbers and holding open hatchways and _he only had two arms_. Adaima just kept watching him. She didn’t even notice when the storm stopped.

‘Careful,’ the Doctor said. ‘You’ll break your neck.’

The Kasama girl on top of the signal pole seemed to cling to it tighter when the Doctor started speaking. The storm had abated, and hot sunlight had replaced it. The clouds had disappeared as if they’d never been there. The dark chitin on the girl’s arms and legs gleamed in the sharp sunlight. It covered her appendages in smooth segments, like plate mail. She squirmed in a very careful way, clearly well-aware of the precarious state of her own equilibrium. Through some tricky manoeuvring, she twisted herself around so that she could peer down at the Doctor.

He peered up at her with similar aplomb. He took out his sunglasses and put them on so he could see her better. ‘What are you doing up there?’

‘Watching,’ she called back, in a clear and high voice.

‘Watching what, the telly?’

‘You.’

‘Oh.’ He thought about that. ‘I’ve not done anything interesting recently. Sorry to bore you.’

‘You got so many people into the transport,’ she called down. ‘You’re brave and smart, even though you only have two arms. It must be because you’re privileged.’

‘I am?’ he asked. This was news. Well, not really. But relatively speaking.

‘You seem like you are,’ she said. She looked away from him so she could consider her own words. ‘I’m not sure why, but I’ve got a feeling about it.’

‘Do you think you could have your feeling down here? You’re putting a crick in my neck.’

‘Okay,’ she said.

The Doctor watched the little Kasama climb down the signal pole, less out of concern for her well-being and more because he didn’t have anything better to do. She obviously didn’t need any help climbing, anyway. He kept the glasses on, just in case they were about to come in handy. He could never tell, but he had hunches. Maybe his hunches were like the girl’s feelings. But he already had theories about that. Underdeveloped ones. Too underdeveloped to take up his rapidfire attention span.

‘What are you supposed to be, then?’ he said as her bare feet hit the sand.

‘Adaima,’ she said.

She was mistakeably human-looking, save for the beetle’s armour that covered her limbs (and not to mention the extra ones). Her skin (it was actually a kind of dermis not found on Earth, but no need to get pedantic) was only a few shades lighter than the black chitin. Her bright eyes and smooth, round face were disarmingly present and alert.

‘And I’m the Doctor…’ he thought about it a moment. ‘…Adaima. That’s too complicated, I won’t remember it. I can hardly remember Clara half the time.’

‘Sorry,’ Adaima said, without much feeling. ‘How did you get to be so mean?’

‘I’m not mean, I’m in a bad mood. It’s this storm.’ Pointing to the east, he indicated the mass of the _true_ storm, now clearly visible on the horizon. It moved slowly, almost imperceptibly forward, a mass of dust and lightning, like a stampede across the belly of the sky. The Doctor squinted at it beneath his sunglasses. ‘What do you think? Does the storm put you in a bad mood?’

‘It’s going to destroy my home.’

‘Ooh. A real _monster_ of a mood, then. Remind me not to get on your bad side.’

Adaima laughed vaguely. ‘You’re like my grandpa. He talked like you.’

‘Is that so,’ the Doctor said, but made no effort to hide the fact that he wasn’t listening anymore. His attention had turned on the signal pole Adaima had just got down from. He wandered around it in a circle, then turned on his heel and looked out at the battered cityscape.

Clasping his hands together, he addressed the skyline:

‘Why?’

‘Why did the storm start?’ Adaima asked.

‘No, although that’s a good one too. I’ll have that one as well.’ He turned to look at her again. ‘Why did it _stop_?’

Adaima blinked—clearly, the question hadn’t occurred to her. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘And that’s strange, isn’t it? Extreme fluctuations in humidity, increased air pressure, temperature spikes, cloud coverage just _coming and going_ … atmospheric disturbances this dramatic are rare as it is, but for the storm to then just _leave_ afterwards…? Impossible. Signs suggest the storm should be constant. Your planet should _already_ be uninhabitable.’

The Doctor turned round to look at her again. By her expression, she hadn’t followed a lot of that. ‘The priests say similar stuff,’ she said.

‘Good, people in charge for me to get cross with,’ he said. ‘The priests, priests of what?’

Adaima shrugged, as if the answer was obvious. ‘Privilege. It means they’re…’ she gestured around her head vaguely. ‘Privileged. Um, I don’t know what your word is. I’ve never been off-world.’

It occurred to the Doctor that the TARDIS might be mistranslating an untranslatable word. He decided not to dwell on this, lest it made him grumpy. ‘Nevermind. The priests, then, they take care of things around here, do they? What are they doing to help?’

Adaima looked back in the vague direction of the transport shuttle, then returned her gaze to the Doctor. ‘Um, helping us leave? Mum tells me they used to do a lot of, um, environment stuff. Plans to reduce pollution. But none of it worked and it just got worse. I was really little back then, though, so I don’t remember. Now they’re just focused on helping everyone get away. What else _could_ they do?’

‘A very good question. How _do_ you fight nature? The inevitable wall of a tidal wave… you can’t stop it coming down. You can’t outthink a storm, it doesn’t think. And you can’t out-manoeuvre it, it’s a _storm_. Its only job is to manoeuvre. So do you know what I think? Don’t answer that, I’m on a roll. I think you’re onto something. Because you just climbed up a signal pole. Full of electricity. And what else is full of electricity?’

‘The storm!’ Adaima said.

‘I said don’t answer. But yes, the storm. So we can’t beat it at thinking, and we can’t beat it at manoeuvring, but maybe we can beat it at electrocuting.’

That sounded like a pretty good idea to Adaima. But she had no idea how it was supposed to work. The signal poles kept all their electricity underground, deep within the earth. It meant that nothing was open. There was no way for the electricity to get in or out.

While Adaima was thinking, the Doctor had hopped over to the signal pole and knelt down. It took her a moment to find him again, he moved so quickly. She saw he had one of his fingers pressed near his temple, and a whirring sound was coming from his eyewear. He was running the fingertips of his other hand along a seam in the pole.

‘Here,’ he said. There was a pop and a square of the paneling flapped open against his palm. Adaima’s eyes widened—behind the panel was a whole network of wires and flashing lights! She was struck with a strangely wondrous horror; she’d never stopped to imagine what might be inside of a signal pole. The Doctor leaned closer, peering at the wires with his whirring sunglasses.

‘Is that its stomach?’ she asked.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, it’s a pole. Poles don’t have stomachs,’ he said. ‘These are its _veins_.’

‘Full of blood?’ she asked, now concerned.

‘Of a sort. Full of electricity.’ He looked at her with one eyebrow quirked up over his lenses. ‘Machine blood. The energy your home runs on.’

Adaima didn’t know what to say to that, so she just stared at him in wonderment. He turned back to the wiring and tapped his glasses; the lights amid the wires flickered and went out. Then, to Adaima’s continued horror, the Doctor plunged his hand into the mesh of wires and started fishing around.

After a pause and a grunt, he pulled his hand free. In it was a squarish, blocky white object covered in little green and red lights. They flickered and flashed at odd intervals. ‘Hold that,’ the Doctor said, plunking it unceremoniously into two of her hands.

‘What is it?’ Adaima asked.

‘Circuit breaker. Little box to keep the power in check.’

‘Is it dangerous?’

‘Yes. Be careful,’ he added, a little lamely.

The Doctor had turned back to the pole and was prodding the hole he’d left with the removal of the circuit breaker. He plucked at the wires with two fingers, and deftly pulled one loose. It had a sharp point to the end of it, as if it had been torn, and it sparked a little. When she saw her mother again, Adaima decided she wouldn’t tell her about this bit.

The Doctor clearly wasn’t going to explain himself. Adaima thought he must not be very good with kids. Her mother had told her that some grown-ups didn’t know how to talk to children, because they had forgotten how to be a child themselves. Adaima figured that the Doctor didn’t know how to be a kid anymore. She decided she would try very hard to not hold it against him.

‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.

‘Something stupid,’ he said.

‘I won’t tell anyone if you’ll get in trouble,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it’s important to do things you’re not supposed to, like climbing up signal poles, but you still can’t tell certain people, like your mum.’

The Doctor looked at her and raised his eyebrows. She wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean, but she suspected it might be a friendly sort of gesture. ‘We’ll be partners in crime, then,’ he said. ‘I won’t tell mum if you don’t tell Clara.’

‘Who’s Clara?’

‘Friend of mine.’

‘What shouldn’t I tell her about?’

‘This,’ the Doctor said. Then he picked up the loose wire and jammed it into the side of his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't forget to leave a comment, say hi <:


	3. (((oncoming storm)))

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara learns a thing or two about the...

CHAPTER THREE

(((oncoming storm)))

By the time the storm cleared, Clara thought she was the only person still standing on top of the ship. The Kasama had dispersed along with the thunder. She stood alone, breathing the wet air.

The sound of boots made her turn. Three Kasama were standing behind her, all wearing shiny white clothing and holding long, sap-like lengths of some glowing white material. The one in the lead—a tall man, barrel-chested—held his at the ready.

‘Are you responsible for this?’ he asked her, indicating the opened vents in the ship through which the civilians had entered.

Clara weighed her options. When the lie did come out, she delivered it with one of her best Doctor voices. ‘Yes, I am. I didn’t think you’d protest to having more of your people saved. Or did I miss a trick?’

The lead guard blinked, taken aback. ‘Well, no.’

‘Right. So there’s no problem, then?’ She blustered a laugh, put on the smile that used to end arguments with Danny. ‘Other than the storm, I mean.’

‘Look, this is ridiculous,’ one of the guard’s fellows said, stepping forward. She was a small woman with shocking silver hair pulled back tightly behind her head, and the stare with which she fixed Clara was iron. ‘You do appreciate how far out in the galaxy you are right now, right? We’re lucky to get one or two alien visitors a _year_ on Kasamos, and that was before the weather got started. So who in the _satar_ ’s belly are _you_ , and why are you here?’

‘Clara Oswald,’ she said. This was usually when the Doctor swooped in, but nevermind it. ‘I’m a time and space traveller. I help.’

‘You help?’ The lead guard seemed to perk up.

‘Yes, my friend and I. He’s called the Doctor. We go around helping people.’ She gestured, she hoped pointedly, at the shuttle vents. ‘We’ve only just got here, so you might have to get us up to speed a bit, but—’

‘Do you have any past experience with freak atmospheric disturbances?’

‘Oh. Well, no, not exactly. But my friend—’

‘He’s a meteorologist _and_ a doctor?’ the woman said, no-holds-barred on the sarcasm.

Clara squinted at her. The third guard took the opportunity to speak up.

‘We could use help,’ he said.

‘What are two aliens going to do?’ the woman shot back.

‘If I could explain…’ Clara tried.

‘You’re right, Fian, we _do_ need help,’ the lead guard said to the other man. ‘But I also have to agree, Mara, that a strange young alien doesn’t seem like the right choice. Er, no offense—Clara, was it?’ He smiled, and made a very deliberate show of stowing his weapon. ‘My name is Kocheck. Welcome to Kasamos, such as it is.’

Clara withered. She was beginning to wish she’d played this conversation straight and let the Doctor do the heavy-lifting. She was normally far above getting talked over by _glorified_ _police_. Her head just wasn’t on right. Still, she did her best to keep it out of her face. ‘Nice to meet you, Kocheck. Believe in us or not, we’re still going to try to help.’

‘And maybe I’ll come to thank you for that, eh?’ But the comment seemed more conciliatory than genuine. Kockeck returned his attention immediately to the others. ‘Mara! Your home is still functional. Our new charge will stay with you tonight, until we can make up some boarding papers for her and see to available space on the shuttle.’

‘That really isn’t necessary,’ Clara tried to tell them, but they weren’t listening.

That was how she wound up following Mara through the battered streets of Mavana, dodging bits of loose brick and debris that covered the streets. The Kasama woman was obviously unhappy about this arrangement. Her lips seemed stuck in a thin, tight grimace and she hardly looked at Clara more than once. She said absolutely nothing as they walked through the city.

Clara knew from experience that a lot of scary things in the universe could wind up being secretly very cool, but walking in awkward silence with someone who doesn’t like you is not one of them. She wasn’t going to tolerate it for very long. 

‘Four arms,’ she said finally. ‘That’s me jealous!’

In the wake of Mara’s deafening silence, Clara was left to reflect on what a dumb thing that was to say.

She tried again: ‘Sorry, I’m a little… tired.’

This didn’t produce anything either, so Clara allowed the dust to settle before her next attempt. When she spoke again, the sun had set somewhat and dramatic light arced across the streets.

‘Could you give me your name again?’ she said, feigning ignorance. ‘I didn’t get a proper chance to introduce myself.’

She sighed. ‘Mara. Does it matter?’

‘I’m just trying to be nice.’

‘You’d better run off and save Kasamos, then. That’d be _real_ nice of you.’

‘You haven’t met the Doctor yet,’ Clara said, ignoring the sarcasm. ‘Trust me, he’s really good with this stuff.’

‘What’s he gonna do, shoot the lightning full of bullets?’ Mara growled.

‘It sounds like you don’t _want_ to be saved.’

‘I don’t,’ she snapped, rounding on Clara. They stood there and stared at each other for a moment, until finally Mara’s shoulders lowered. ‘I told you, Kasamos is a distant planet. We’ve kept to ourselves for thousands of years. I’d rather evacuate and survive than sit and watch an alien faff about while the wind blows sand out our eyes.’

‘It’s a scary-looking storm, I’ll admit,’ Clara said, recalling the faces from her nightmare. ‘But you really think there’s _no hope_?’

Mara squinted at her. ‘You’re not going to leave me alone, are you?’

‘Probably not, I don’t think.’

She sighed. ‘You’re staying at my home. That’s not a favour, it’s something I’m doing as part of my job. We don’t need to be friends. Got it?’

She resumed walking. After a pause, Clara followed.

The landscape was stripped and dry, all desert but for the grassy flatland that emerged at intervals. The buildings in the city were constructed of dark red stone, stacked like blocks. It looked like something very old—but then there were the tall, pristine white signal poles extending into the darkening sky.

They passed under a dusty red curtain; the only ‘door’ into Mara’s house. Clara half-expected to see a stone counter covered in maize bowls and chisels—but the interior was surprisingly familiar. A kitchen counter to the left of the door had a shiny metal sink on one end and a silver-white stove on the other. A kettle sat just in front of her, amid a sea of kitchen towels. A tall white box was obviously a refrigerator.

The kitchen opened up to a connected living room further inside. The only _totally_ unrecognizable piece of furniture was a flat white disc floating in the air in front of a squat wicker divan. Clara walked over, kneeling to inspect it.

‘It’s just the entertainment system,’ Mara said, almost defensively. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve got a receiver, now. Seems like you Remote people are everywhere these days.’

‘Sorry?’ Clara blinked at her. ‘No, we just don’t have anything like this at home.’

‘That would be you and the Doctor’s home?’

‘No—just mine,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s an alien to me, too.’

Mara sniffed. ‘If you say so. I hope he’s not like you. Swanning around and sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. I’ll put the kettle on.’

‘Thanks,’ Clara muttered. She pried her attention away from the ‘entertainment.’ ‘So how did the storm start? Do you know what caused it?’

‘Kettle,’ Mara repeated. ‘Go round the back to the _soya_ bushes and pull a few leaves for me, hmm?’

‘ _Soya_?’

‘They’re blue. Can’t miss ‘em.’

Some minutes later, Clara returned with a handful of tapered blue leaves, dry despite the weather. Mara seemed to have a little garden in the back of her house; a metal spade and other garden tools were propped against the side of the building. The garden was framed with a soft white fence, the same material as the signal poles. Clara decided not to touch anything, on the off-chance it held a charge.

‘I like your garden,’ she said.

Mara smiled a little, albeit briefly and stiffly. ‘My daughter loves it. She still thinks it’s part of the real wilderness out there. But she’s getting to that age where she’ll see how big things really are.’

‘You have a daughter?’

‘Adaima,’ Mara said. ‘With any luck, she’s on the shuttle right now. She’s off…’

Mara didn’t finish the sentence, frowning down at the kettle. Clara deigned to lean forward, putting a hand out. ‘She’s off?’

Mara looked sharply at her. ‘Off for the new world, I guess. Whatever that’ll be. We’re not in any _real_ danger, you know, so long as you stay out of the storms. Adaima and I especially. Guards get their own shuttle, guaranteed space. I’ll be among the last to leave, but it’s a guaranteed trip. And Adaima was supposed to go on the shuttle today.’ Her eyes narrow. ‘I believe she made it. I must.’

‘You didn’t see her board,’ Clara said, knitting her brow.

‘She made it,’ Mara repeated—and quickly changed the subject. ‘But the planet? There’s no saving that.’

‘The Doctor will save it.’

Mara gave her a look that made it very clear what she thought about that particular idea. Instead of responding, she handed a soft clay mug to Clara, who drank. The tea was bitter. ‘Thanks,’ Clara said.

‘I don’t trust you,’ Mara said, quite matter-of-factly.

‘Oh,’ Clara said.

‘You really believe that this storm is going to destroy our planet.’

‘I don’t follow,’ Clara said.

‘An alien pops up on a strange planet. Bit of a weird electrical storm, but it passes alright. Suddenly the locals are telling her that the same storm is going to destroy the entire ecosphere. Don’t you think the alien would be at least a little skeptical? Storms don’t work that way, after all. And it’s not like you’re privileged.’

Clara scoffed, unable to tell if she should be offended or not. ‘Trust me, I’m not your average human. I’ve been _around_.’

‘Exactly.’ Mara leaned forward, elbows out, her small stature suddenly quite intimidating. ‘So why would you believe us? You _know_ storms don’t work that way. You must know something else. Must have seen something that proved it to you.’

Immediately the nightmare was there again, manifesting in her mind’s eye. She knew she saw those same faces in the storm. She knew she did. Clara stared at Mara, feeling caught. She felt like the Kasama woman was staring straight through her eyes and seeing the nightmare behind them. A sharp, cold silence filled the kitchen.

‘I guess it doesn’t matter,’ Mara said suddenly, turning away to drink her tea.

Clara didn’t know what to say. Eventually Mara left the kitchen and moved to the white disc across from the divan. She ran two hands along either side of the disc, her other hands resting on the table as she leaned forward. As she drew her arms up behind the disc, the front of it lit up like a TV screen. Mara didn’t move her hands. She watched the screen flicker, expression blank, and seemed to be moving her fingers in a certain way along the back of the disc. Abruptly, the image changed from flickering static to a clear satellite picture of the oncoming storm.

It looked even clearer than it did in person, in fact. Clara could see, in hyper-realistic detail, the snaking tendrils of fog and electricity that rose from the storm like the tentacles of some unfathomable beast. She could even see the elliptical curve of the storm’s body, following the bend of the planet itself. There was a rolling, cumulative nature to its movement, like a snowball rolling down a hill. The stone that gathers moss.

‘There are livefeeds on multiple signals,’ Mara said. ‘You can get an image of it from all sorts of different angles. And programmes of scientists monitoring it, collecting data.’ She looked up at Clara, lowering her hands. ‘Let me know if you want me to change it.’

She left, heading down the hall, before Clara could get a word in.

Kasamos had priests, and priests had temples.

What priests didn’t have—not on this planet, at the very least—were Gods, scriptures, prophecies, or even a general answer to the meaning of the universe. This was because Kasamos’ priests weren’t religious figures. They were electricians.

Avarice had only been living in the big city for a year—he moved around the time the storm had started forming. He had been offered a position as a priest at the prestigious Altar of the Moon in Koshei. His wife hadn’t wanted him to take it. But it was the right thing to do.

Privileged as talented as him were rare. That’s why they needed them as priests: priests maintained the temples, and the temples controlled the signal towers. Without privileged like him, Kasamos would become disconnected, the regions of the planet becoming islands separated by the harsh desert.

More importantly, they monitored those connections. They made sure the signals stayed strong. So Avarice noticed immediately when the storm appeared within those signals too.

It lived. It had a mind.

Avarice was confident that none of the other priests knew. He had diverted the signals into a special subset of wires—a bundle he had subtly cut off from the main body of the temple. A discrete synaptic ‘pocket’ where no one else looked. Using those wires, he could monitor the storm’s presence: the strength of its mind as it grew in size, the nature of the malevolence that filled it.

He wanted to tell the other priests. He was no fool, and he knew this information was important. But every time he tried to muster up the courage, he couldn’t do it. His privilege let him see inside the storm’s mind, and he couldn’t stop thinking about what he saw there. There was no way to know how the others would respond to what Avarice had seen in the eye of the storm.

Himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one took so long! Work and school make fanfiction even tougher than it used to be. ^^ Hope you're enjoying yourselves.


	4. ((((missing perspectives))))

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is about a nightmare. 
> 
> SPOILER WARNING: This section has a lot of broad, sweeping references to multiple parts of Doctor Who canon, not just the Twelfth Doctor era. It's generalized in such a way that I don't think anyone could really be spoiled by it, but I thought I'd put a warning here just in case.

CHAPTER FOUR

((((missing perspectives))))

Traveling with the Doctor can be tricky. In his old age, he’s drawn to pessimism and perfectionism. It’s easy to feel inadequate around him. It’s easy to feel like a small mistake is the end of the world. Clara Oswald reminded herself that she couldn’t be perfect. There had to be mistakes somewhere.

Ianto Jones was an assistant to Torchwood 3 who fell in love with the immortal (and infamous) Jack Harkness. He had buzzed brown hair and the beginnings of a prominent balding pattern. He cried often, and was never ashamed of it.

‘You have no idea how dangerous you make people to themselves when you’re around,’ Rory Williams told the Doctor. 

Liz Shaw was a scientist working for UNIT in the 70s or 80s. She had a certain fondness for cinnamon pecan pie. Those few who knew this were sworn to cult-like secrecy. 

Clara Oswald has no idea what any of this means.

Sarah Jane Smith was an investigative journalist and on-off reporter who kept sticking her nose where it didn’t belong, and as a result eventually ended up in a time-space machine. That’s usually how these things go. She’s met the Doctor so many times that she stopped trying to keep count after a while. Nowadays, she lives on a house on Bannerman Road and pretends to be retired whilst faffing about with aliens in the attic. _She_ knows what the Remote is, but Clara doesn’t. Thankfully, it doesn’t matter to this story.

Romanadvoratrelundar was a Time Lady. Romanadvoratrelundar is a Time Lady. Romana both is and isn’t a Time Lady, because all the Time Ladies are supposed to be dead, but nothing is making any sense these days. Romana preferred the term Time Lord. She wanted to be called Fred, but the Doctor didn’t listen.

‘The great hairy beastie… it’s the Doctor!’ Jamie McCrimmon cried.

Clara Oswald continues to have no idea what’s going on.

River Song was an archaeologist who was also called Melody Pond who was a teenager who was sometimes called Mels. The names don’t really matter. River knew this better than most people because she knew what the Doctor’s name was. 

‘Harriet Jones, Prime Minister,’ Harriet Jones said.

Adric was an alien and he travelled with the Doctor. The Doctor was also an alien, by human standards. By Adric’s standards, humans were also aliens. But was he right? But was he right? Adric will never know. Maybe it’s better that way.

Clara still doesn’t get it.

But that’s okay. We can explain it to her.

All these names and faces share a certain commonality. All of them have died. Some of them only technically, but most of them literally. Forgive us if we don’t go into specifics, Clara. The ‘how’ and ‘why’ isn’t the point. Just the death. Which is something that Clara _does_ understand. Clara has also died. Clara also will die. Clara has died, and also will die, plenty of times.

Take, for instance, the young ballroom dancer born in 1963. She started lessons at 11, walking through the pavilion every other day to reach the studio on the other side of town. It was challenging work, but the dancer loved a challenge. She loved a challenge so much that some people called it a stubborn streak. The days where she didn’t have a partner to dance with were the hardest—without a partner, she had nothing to question but herself.

She went to those lessons for three years, right up until the day she died. On the other side of the pavilion, she’d caught sight of a man walking arm-in-arm with a slim woman. He was turned away from her, but all the same because his explosive head of curly yellow hair seemed far more interesting than any possible face. And the coat he was wearing—like a rainbow patchwork. The random colours reminded her of something… a memory on the tip of her tongue. She had no intention of approaching him, but he was in the direction of the dance studio, and something about the idea of walking closer was unbearably tempting…

There was a bus tearing through the street. She didn’t look before crossing. But then again, neither did Danny.

That wasn’t the only time with Dreamcoat. For instance, the part-time translator on board the station Talus V. Humans weren’t very popular during that time in galactic history, and knowing any English at all was considered something of a novelty. The translator had taken the job because it paid so well, but she would have much preferred staying at her home back on… back on… well, wherever it was she’d been before she was there.

Like the dancer, she never met him. But she saw his face when he broadcasted it across the entire station to inform everyone on board that, well, there’s no good way to say it, everyone’s about 30 microspans away from being fizzled by an asteroid. Don’t worry, I have a plan—not that any of you have any faith in me at all.

But the translator _did_ have faith in him. She didn’t know how, or why, but she knew just looking at him that he was a trustworthy person—a safe person. She had some vague sense that she knew who he was. These feelings were so strange and powerful that they drove her to sneak out of lockdown so she could help. She snuck through the ducts and out into the empty corridors of the ship. She ran from ominous footsteps and the reports of guns—the evidence of an ongoing story in which she had no role. She thought she heard the man’s voice and scrambled in another vent to find him.

Natch, that was when the engines overheated, and the translator was quite literally air-fried to death.

How about the princess in 17th Century France? She had just finished her schooling—balancing the books on her head, organising the silverware—and her tutor had declared her a True French Woman. In the princess’ eyes, a distinction hard-earned. She had spent most of her formative years combating the reigning court opinion that she was simply ‘too English-looking’. She was proud to finally feel accepted. It would not last.

As celebration, she had gone out the park with a cabal of other royalty. It was there that the princess saw a strange man in a heavy coat, a comically-large scarf trailing his every move. He had seemed shifty, watching everyone in the park at once—like someone who knows something no one else does. At one point, he caught the princess’ gaze, and smiled very briefly before looking away. That smile did something wrong to her. He smiled at her like she was a passing fad, a joke, and suddenly she couldn’t shake the thought that she _was_ a joke—that her entire life was some silly game she was playing.

It was more or less at this exact moment that everyone else in the park decided it was time to really kick off the French Revolution. She hadn’t noticed the protesting peasants earlier, but now they were all she could notice as they swarmed around the royalty. They brandished mutilated flags and all manner of hackneyed weapons as they pulled the guards from their horses. The princess ran. She ran with such fear that she didn’t immediately realize she was searching for the man with the scarf. For some reason, she thought he could help her. But he had disappeared as soon as the mob appeared.

It didn’t take the mob long to catch up. They kicked her ribs in once they had her on the ground, and the blade they used to cut her head off was mottled with rust.

There are more. Of course there’s more.

The inmate at the Dalek asylum. They tortured her and twisted her in their image. She wasn’t called Clara that time—probably because she didn’t feel much like Clara that time.

The barmaid in Barbados. The pirates that raided the place took their time killing her, doing terrible things with the knife. 

The military operative during World War II. That time, the death wasn’t the unpleasant part.

Many, many times, she was the Gallifreyan. The splinters seemed to favour that place. One of those was the first one, and the only one the _true_ Clara remembers with any clarity. Stepping across the nesting chamber, past rows and rows of TARDISes, and calling the Doctor’s name. Looking at him, so young, so staggeringly young—his face so old but the eyes a child’s eyes, glittering—and his actions so childish too, stealing something just because he was in a bad mood. Anyway, someone from the Celestial Intervention Agency shot her right after he left.

And there was the governess in the 19th Century, of course. That one had _all_ the names. Clara Oswin Oswald, and even sometimes “Miss Montague.” What a world. What a happy world. Full of snow and secrets and laughing children and the sound of her spine snapping when it hit the frozen ground.

Do you want to hear more? It’s okay, it’s not sick to listen to her die. Clara doesn’t know the difference anyway. She can’t remember any of it. If she tries to it’s like… well, it’s not like anything, because it’s impossible. Impossible Girl.

But she’ll try to explain. Her mind can only remember so much of her past selves; it can only hold so much water. It’s like looking into a kaleidoscope. Like focusing on one little sequin. When you twist it, you can only follow the sequin for so long—then it disappears beneath another fractal, warps, transforms into something completely different. Those are her splinters, twisting together, incomprehensible, spinning fragments inside her head. 

Most of the time, Clara Oswald avoids looking in the kaleidoscope at all. 

The garden is enormous, spanning acres of rich green earth. Clara is standing in front of a huge, gnarled tree, some sort of centrepiece in the garden. There’s a thick, well-kept ring of decorative stones surrounding it. She can tell it’s a centrepiece because where the rest of the garden is nearly choking on itself, overwhelmed with greenery, the tree has a wide birth all to itself. Huge red fruits dangle from the branches. Clara knows instinctively that if she eats one, she’ll fall asleep straight away. How convenient! If only such a thing were real! Then Clara would actually be able to get some sleep and wouldn’t have to think about the nightmare ever again.

She’s alone. The Doctor is nowhere to be seen. She has a vague sense that he had been here just a moment ago, but now she is imbued with a supernatural certainty that she will never see him again.

She decides to reach up and take a fruit. As her hand clears her head, there’s the sound of cracking branches throughout the garden. It sounds uncomfortably like a circle of people all taking a step forward at once.

Clara freezes with her hand still raised. Slowly, she turns her head to peer around the garden. She can’t see anyone. But the plants are so dense, any number of people could hide easily. People, or…

The fruit is less than a foot away. She raises her arm a little further. The cracking rushes through the garden like the crash of waves on the beach. She spins around, dropping her hand, and can see a myriad of dark eyes watching her through the brush. Dark, ugly eyes. Some disturbingly beady, others grotesquely large.

‘Do you want to remember?’ a ponderous voice asks. Clara spins round again to see a creature peering at her from behind the tree. It is grossly misshapen: legs too small, torso too tall, arms too long, head too big. Its mouth juts out from its face, hairy lips nearly spread over its chin, like an exaggerated caricature of a monkey. Clara can’t see above its nose—a dark cloak covers its remaining features.

It holds one of the fruits in its taloned hand. ‘Eat to remember,’ it says. ‘Eat and remember everything.’

Clara opens her mouth to say something—ask a question, begin a protest—and the creature lunges forward with impossible speed. It jams the fruit between her teeth and presses its huge palm flat over her mouth. She tries to scream instinctively and is unable to do so around the intrusion. The creature clamps its hand down further, coiling its lanky fingers around her head.

She tries to fight it off. She fights madly, ferally, with the sort of violence that she would never-before dare to use. Clawing at its outstretched arm, kicking at all available flesh, trying to work her teeth around the fruit to bite its hand. She fights like an animal. The creature is completely unaffected.

‘Eat,’ the creature says again.

The eyes in the garden join it, chanting. ‘ _Eat, eat, eat!_ ’

Clara’s efforts leave her gagging, choking, sobbing. The fruit, now mashed between her spasming jaws, has filled her throat with sweet, cloying syrup. She can hardly breathe. Her tears, and the huge hand over her mouth, do not help.

‘ _EAT, EAT, EAT!_ ’

They won’t stop. They’re screaming at her now. Their voices grate and boom and fill the garden. And the fruit begins to slide down her throat. That’s when her vision goes dark.

‘Aaahh--!’

Clara woke up suddenly and without warning. She was in Mara’s house, sitting up on the hanging cot Mara had offered her. Her heavy breathing threatened to tip her onto the ground. She took a moment to steady herself, one hand on the cot’s ropes and the other over her chest. Her memory of the nightmare was rapidly dissipating, and yet it somehow felt as if she was still in it. Like there had been no transition between it and real life.

Gradually, the world began to reassert its realness. She could hear the sound of talking coming from the kitchen. It was the middle of the night. Clara realized she hadn’t been woken up by nothing. She’d heard something. A scream.

Not a scream of terror like the one she’d wanted to make, but a scream of joy. The sound of relief.

Unsteadily, moving cautiously as though she expected some part of herself to be missing, she got off the cot and treaded to the hall. Much of the floor in Mara’s house was covered with thick, soft rugs. Her toes curled into the plush as she saw the Doctor leering over the kitchen counter, just visible in the angle from her doorway. On the other side of the counter, Mara was crouched in front of a small Kasama girl, picking over her for pieces out of place. The girl tolerated it with surprising patience.

‘Has this man been bothering you?’ Mara asked her daughter.

‘No,’ Adaima said. ‘He was bothering me.’ 

Mara lifted her head to glare at the Doctor. But, to Clara’s surprise, the expression cooled quickly. ‘Thank you for bringing her home.’

‘It was on the way,’ he said, missive. ‘Now, perhaps you can help me. I believe I saw you while the storm was whinging on. You’re one of the guards, yes? Minding people as they board?’

‘I have other duties,’ she said defensively.

‘I’m sure,’ he said. ‘I need to talk to your head guard. Heavy-set man, probably does squats every morning, a bit dopey looking—’

‘Kocheck,’ she said.

‘I’m sure,’ he said again. ‘Where is he now?’

‘All the guards who don’t have their homes anymore are lodging at Mavana’s temple until the evacuation is complete,’ Mara said. ‘So, most of them. You’ll probably find him there, trying to turn the altar into a war table.’ Mara stood up as she spoke, while, Adaima tried to scrutinize the Doctor as if she were her mother’s shadow. 

‘And I’m looking for another alien, as well,’ the Doctor said. ‘Two arms and funny skin, just like me. Well, not _just_ like me. For one thing, she’s so short I’m surprised I don’t trip over her more often. And you should see the sorts of things she can do with her face…’

‘Clara,’ Mara said, looking towards the hall. ‘She’s—’

‘Right here,’ Clara said, moving hurriedly into the kitchen. She tried to make it look like she’d been walking straight out of the room—like she hadn’t been lurking in the hall for so long, trying to gather her shattered nerves. ‘Finally caught up to me, I see,’ she remarked to the Doctor, going for smug satisfaction.

‘And what’d I miss?’ he asked, dropping to his elbows on the counter so he could rest his face on his hand.

‘Well… I’ve met the guards. Mara showed me the entertainment system.’ Boy, did that sound lame. ‘Doctor, the storm is—’

‘Going to wipe out all life on the planet? Fry all the plants? Scrub the place down to dirt?’

‘Actually, I was going to say, “not really a storm.”’

He shot her one of his wiry, wild-eyed glances. ‘What?’

‘I noticed on the telly. Er, whatever it is. Mara, could you…?’

‘I can do it!’ Adaima said excitedly. She hopped away from her mum and ran for the adjacent living room, landing in front of the white disc. She ran her hands quickly along the back and the screen shimmered, once more showing a satellite feed of the storm.

The Doctor followed quickly, in the same motion stepping to the disc and crouching down to be at eye level. Clara saw his gaze trace the curvature of the storm. He took out his sonic glasses and put them on to better study the elliptical pattern.

‘You’re kidding,’ he said.

Mara had also followed them into the living room. ‘What?’

The Doctor didn’t respond, face inches from the screen. ‘I noticed when you turned on the broadcast earlier,’ Clara told her. ‘The storm is one mass. The way it moves, it sort of folds in on itself. I thought it might be a hurricane or something, but even hurricanes don’t behave like that.’ She looked towards the Doctor. ‘I was thinking maybe there’s something inside? Like a ship, and the “storm” is its dust cloud.’

‘No,’ the Doctor said, still not looking away from the screen. ‘Nothing’s in there. It’s all dust and clouds and lightning inside. It’s a storm.’

Mara made a face. ‘But Clara said—’

‘Yes, Clara’s right, it’s _not_ a storm. Not a _natural_ one. It’s being controlled somehow, or…’ His eyes lit up suddenly, a familiar gleam. ‘Oh. _Ooh_.’ He turned the second ‘oh’ on Clara as she went to his side, waggling a finger at her. Then he looked at Mara again. ‘Privilege. I see.’

‘Privilege? What’s that got to do with anything?’ Mara said in irritation.

‘Took me a while to put it together, but I’ve got it now. Clara, what’s wrong with the telly?’

‘It’s not a telly,’ Mara said. 

For her own part, Clara went over to the device and peered at it. It looked like a well slick, futuristic flatscreen TV: posh white, with a screen so clear that when it was turned on it looked like the picture was floating in midair. Presently, the storm on screen seemed to be occupying the living room. It gave off very little light. It was oval in shape, which was different, but nothing _wrong_ with that…

Clara ran her hands along the back of the device, like the Kasama had done. ‘You turn it on in the back… oh, but there’s no buttons. It’s all one smooth piece of metal.’

‘No buttons!’ the Doctor roared, like it was some sort of punchline. ‘And?’

‘And…’ she stepped back, assessing the device. Her head was rolling. A headache was slowly reaching a crescendo, building in intensity after the conclusion of the nightmare. She tried to focus. It was a TV, but not really. It didn’t have buttons. It was made for aliens with four arms. She suddenly found herself thinking about all the different sci-fi references she could equate this to. Reality was losing its colour again.

‘Clara,’ the Doctor said in irritation. She realized she’d been quiet for far too long. He gave her a quizzical look before rapping the screen with one knuckle. ‘The broadcast. It’s completely silent. _Where’s the reporter_?’

‘Oh,’ she said, realising—but most of her brainpower was devoted to not looking crestfallen at her failure.

Mara huffed, as if some great weight had been lifted from her. ‘ _That’s_ what you’re getting at. She can’t hear it because she isn’t one of us.’

He nodded, clasping his hands together. ‘You’re telepathic, aren’t you? That’s what privilege is. Some of your species are born with it, some aren’t, but all of you are sensitive to it. So the privileged become the priests and reporters and media outlets that broadcast the signals across the planet—telepathic signals that any Kasama can pick up naturally, but only some Kasama can generate. That’s why we can hear the broadcast, but Clara can’t.’

‘So someone is controlling the storm,’ Clara said. ‘With their mind.’

‘Are you accusing one of my own people of trying to destroy our planet?’ Mara sneered, rounding on the Doctor. ‘Because if you are, I suggest you change your mind.’

‘Oh, shut up, I’m not accusing anyone of anything,’ he snapped. ‘I’m just pointing out a fact. Are or aren’t your people telepathic?’

‘ _I’m_ not,’ she said derisively. ‘And neither is my Adaima.’

She gestured at the little girl on the divan, who had fallen asleep mere seconds after turning on the disc. Until now, only Mara had noticed.

‘Yes, obviously, you wouldn’t be a guard if you were any good at it,’ the Doctor said. ‘It’s _possible_ that a Kasama is trying to destroy the planet. That, or some other telepathic race just happens to be hanging around.’ He stopped and cocked his head, as if listening. ‘Right, okay. I have a plan. I need to go to the temple and talk with Kocheck.’

Clara made to follow him, and he stopped, turning into her sharply. ‘No, you stay here,’ he said. ‘I’ll need these people later. Probably. I think. It’s a hunch. Just keep an eye on them, okay?’

Then he was out the kitchen and into the night. Clara shot a look back at Mara, who was squinting at her. Clara put her arms up in exasperation and then ran out after him.

‘Doctor, wait!’ she called. He stopped, with obvious reluctance, under the slender shadow of a signal pole. She caught up to him in a jog. ‘But how do we know something isn’t _in_ the storm? Like a ship or something.’

‘I already checked,’ he said.

‘You went into it?’

‘No,’ he said. He gave her a look. It was his _don’t ask any more questions_ look.

‘I want to know what you’re hiding,’ she said, crossing her arms.

‘Later,’ he said. When she opened her mouth again, he put up a hand. ‘Promise. Now is house. Grumpy guard. Little girl.’ He waggled his hand in the direction of Mara’s house. ‘Off you pop.’

But Clara didn’t. She couldn’t.

She knew if she went back to the house, she would have to go to bed again. And she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She was never able to sleep after the nightmares. Instead, she would sit up on that cot, staring at the dark ceiling for what would feel like infinite time, caught in a horrible mental battle between her body’s desperate need for sleep and her mind’s desperate fear of doing so. And it’s not like Mara would be any help.

The first night she had the nightmare, she simply tried to go back to sleep. The nightmare didn’t immediately strike her as something important. But when she tried to go to bed again, she found she couldn’t. She was trapped in a fugue state, too tired to move and too frightened to sleep.

Finally, she snapped out of it and went to the console room. She thought she’d busy herself with some mindless activity or other until the Doctor woke up. That was how she found herself trying to copy Circular Gallifreyan onto the chalkboard, using the roundels as reference.

She remembered the Doctor’s reaction so clearly. He had regarded her with a sort of querulous expression, lips folded, eyebrows flat, frown lines pronounced—curious, but trying his best to hide it. He always woke up first. Something was clearly off.

He crossed to the other side of the console, pointedly not saying anything. He flicked a few nobs to fill the space. Then he crossed round the other side of the console, arms folded behind his back. _Then_ he looked at the chalkboard dead-on, squinting at her penmanship.

‘Your syntax is horrible,’ he said. ‘Where are the pronouns?’

‘You tell me!’ she said back, trying to laugh, trying to hide her nerves. ‘It’s just circles and lines. How are you supposed to tell what’s what?’

‘By _reading_ ,’ he frowned. He hadn’t actually _said_ it, he’d _frowned_ it, which was a special talent he had.

‘I can’t draw a perfect circle freehand, anyway. I’m not sure anyone can. Did Time Lords really write like this? It’s pretty, but it seems impractical.’ Clara looked back at him, although his attention had returned to the console. ‘Can you?’

‘Can I what?’

‘Draw a perfect circle, just on the spot.’

‘It’s not drawing, it’s _writing_ ,’ he said, biting down on the _t_. ‘Are we going to talk about this all day? You’re boring me.’

So she’d dropped it. Because he seemed fine and somehow, miraculously, hadn’t questioned her about being up early. Because she didn’t want to have to tell him what had happened. Because she felt silly explaining that she was affected by a dream about choking on fruit. Because it was easier to go off and explore space like normal. Because she didn’t think it would happen again.

But it did. Again and again and again.

So Clara didn’t go back to the house. She wandered instead. She expected it to be dark at night, but the empty streets were illuminated in silver. She looked up to see a grand total of three moons hovering above the planet. By their placement, it seemed as though each one had a unique rotation—but Clara couldn’t determine any specifics.

She walked until she was standing next to the fountain in the town square, and was surprised to find the TARDIS parked there. It seemed the Doctor had moved it at some point during the day. She thought again of his look earlier and wondered what he was keeping from her. She thought again of how strange it was that she was best friends with someone who would casually, openly keep things from her.

She sat down next to the fountain and spun the water around in her palm. The moonlight glittered off the droplets, refracting like a kaleidoscope—her heart froze as this thought reminded her of something from the nightmare. But she couldn’t remember what.

On the horizon was the distant storm. Now that she knew what she was looking for, it was easier to notice the elliptical curve of clouds. It really did seem like it was _rolling_ , pushing forward over the landscape like some massive machine of war.

Clara knew she had a long night ahead of her. She got up and fished her TARDIS key from her pocket. Maybe she could try her hand at Circular Gallifreyan again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: the Doctor's plan.


End file.
